Scan barcode
A review by thetomatowriter
Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie by Maggie Stiefvater
4.0
Okay, I'm gonna be real honest, I'm mostly cutting and pasting the Ballad parts of a review I gave for both this book and Lament on this blog. Because I'm lazy. Sorry xD.
Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie focuses on Deirdre’s best friend, James. He and Dee are now students at Thorn-King Ash, a music academy established to protect students who are gifted enough in music to potentially draw the attention of faeries. James is an incredibly gifted piper, so much so that Thorn-King Ash doesn’t seem to have much to teach him, and catches the attention of Nuala, a leanan sidhe who inspires artists…while feeding on their life force until they die. Nuala’s never been turned down before, but James is determined to make his own way in his music career and even without knowing the catch, has little interest in Nuala’s help. Meanwhile, faeries who spend a considerable time with humans are being killed off under the command of the new queen. It’s obviously all part of some larger plan, and while no one knows what it is, it seems like it will happen right at the school’s doorstep.
The world-building is still great, the faeries are still beautiful and terrifying and ruthless, and Maggie Stiefvater's writing is still Maggie Stiefvater's writing, which is to say it's gorgeous. One thing I really liked was the social divisions between them, which is explored a little more in this book than the last. The leanan sidhe, for instance, are seen as the lowest of the low to faeries, because they’re the most human kind of fae. I loved the tie-in with music. They love music, and they’re drawn to incredibly talented musicians. Several of the musicians at Thorn-King Ash have abilities linked to Them. Dee is a cloverhand. James is vaguely psychic (think about Pete’s vibes in Warehouse 13). Paul can hear the king of the dead singing the names of the dead.
I also sort of loved that Thorn-King Ash was sort of like the Hogwarts of Especially Gifted Musicians. The settings and the imagery was, of course, beautiful. Maybe even moreso than in The Raven Cycle, because it was enhanced by the fey aesthetics. I loved the characters. I liked Dee in Lament, even if she was a little bit of a tried type as far as YA heroines go. I LOVED James from the start, and thought he was even better when he had his own POVs in Ballad, although he was occasionally given to self-pity and sometimes his egotism could be a bit much. Nuala grew on me tremendously, so that by the end of Ballad, she was one of my favorites. Even Luke and Paul started to grow on me. It was gripping. I could never accuse these books of moving too slowly. If anything, there were parts that felt a little rushed, and I’ll get to that in the next paragraph. But it held my interest all throughout, and I remember in the last hundred pages, thinking, “Oh, no, how are they going to get out of this one?” Which is always a fun–-and increasingly rare–-feeling to have towards the end of a book.
The one thing that really got me in these two books was how tropey the romances were, with very little to make them stand out from the stock of the trope, particularly Dee and Luke in Lament. Ballad was slightly better in this respect. While Nuala still had that too-dangerous-for-u-and-was-actually-s’posed-to-kill-you-but-falling-in-love-anyway thing going on, she and James seemed to actually fall in love because of each other and the time they spent around each other. I believed that they genuinely fell in love, rather than just got swept up in all the magic and forbidenness of it all. But there was a bit of a love triangle for a while between Nuala, James, and Deirdre (despite the fact that Dee still didn’t like him that way), and again, towards the end, even if in a somewhat different way, James has to ~choose. It still followed the predictable sort of pattern. From the moment he turned her down, I knew, “This is the first human who’s ever turned her down, now she’s going to be upset and unable to let it go and then she’s going to fall in love with him.” It was just a somewhat more enjoyable trope.
This also gets kind of a failing grade in diversity, as well. All of the characters were either heterosexual or their sexuality wasn’t stated or even hinted at. Even the faeries are only seen in different-sex relationships. All of the principle characters were white and none of even the side characters were described as being anything other than white. Mind you, even of The Raven Cycle, Stiefvater has stated that she can’t be credited with much racial diversity in the series. She seems to be aware of this now, and hopefully, things will improve, but they certainly hadn’t when she wrote these books. Dee’s anxiety (seen more in Lament than this book) is certainly inhibiting, but that’s the closest we come to any representation of disabilities.
Overall, if you want a good series about faeries with overarching plots that keep you in a vicegrip and generally enjoyable characters and writing, I would recommend this series. If you want a flip from a lot of the typical too-easy romantic tropes in YA fantasy, I might suggest Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr instead. Maybe more of a 3.7 than a 4?
Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie focuses on Deirdre’s best friend, James. He and Dee are now students at Thorn-King Ash, a music academy established to protect students who are gifted enough in music to potentially draw the attention of faeries. James is an incredibly gifted piper, so much so that Thorn-King Ash doesn’t seem to have much to teach him, and catches the attention of Nuala, a leanan sidhe who inspires artists…while feeding on their life force until they die. Nuala’s never been turned down before, but James is determined to make his own way in his music career and even without knowing the catch, has little interest in Nuala’s help. Meanwhile, faeries who spend a considerable time with humans are being killed off under the command of the new queen. It’s obviously all part of some larger plan, and while no one knows what it is, it seems like it will happen right at the school’s doorstep.
The world-building is still great, the faeries are still beautiful and terrifying and ruthless, and Maggie Stiefvater's writing is still Maggie Stiefvater's writing, which is to say it's gorgeous. One thing I really liked was the social divisions between them, which is explored a little more in this book than the last. The leanan sidhe, for instance, are seen as the lowest of the low to faeries, because they’re the most human kind of fae. I loved the tie-in with music. They love music, and they’re drawn to incredibly talented musicians. Several of the musicians at Thorn-King Ash have abilities linked to Them. Dee is a cloverhand. James is vaguely psychic (think about Pete’s vibes in Warehouse 13). Paul can hear the king of the dead singing the names of the dead.
I also sort of loved that Thorn-King Ash was sort of like the Hogwarts of Especially Gifted Musicians. The settings and the imagery was, of course, beautiful. Maybe even moreso than in The Raven Cycle, because it was enhanced by the fey aesthetics. I loved the characters. I liked Dee in Lament, even if she was a little bit of a tried type as far as YA heroines go. I LOVED James from the start, and thought he was even better when he had his own POVs in Ballad, although he was occasionally given to self-pity and sometimes his egotism could be a bit much. Nuala grew on me tremendously, so that by the end of Ballad, she was one of my favorites. Even Luke and Paul started to grow on me. It was gripping. I could never accuse these books of moving too slowly. If anything, there were parts that felt a little rushed, and I’ll get to that in the next paragraph. But it held my interest all throughout, and I remember in the last hundred pages, thinking, “Oh, no, how are they going to get out of this one?” Which is always a fun–-and increasingly rare–-feeling to have towards the end of a book.
The one thing that really got me in these two books was how tropey the romances were, with very little to make them stand out from the stock of the trope, particularly Dee and Luke in Lament. Ballad was slightly better in this respect. While Nuala still had that too-dangerous-for-u-and-was-actually-s’posed-to-kill-you-but-falling-in-love-anyway thing going on, she and James seemed to actually fall in love because of each other and the time they spent around each other. I believed that they genuinely fell in love, rather than just got swept up in all the magic and forbidenness of it all. But there was a bit of a love triangle for a while between Nuala, James, and Deirdre (despite the fact that Dee still didn’t like him that way), and again, towards the end, even if in a somewhat different way, James has to ~choose. It still followed the predictable sort of pattern. From the moment he turned her down, I knew, “This is the first human who’s ever turned her down, now she’s going to be upset and unable to let it go and then she’s going to fall in love with him.” It was just a somewhat more enjoyable trope.
This also gets kind of a failing grade in diversity, as well. All of the characters were either heterosexual or their sexuality wasn’t stated or even hinted at. Even the faeries are only seen in different-sex relationships. All of the principle characters were white and none of even the side characters were described as being anything other than white. Mind you, even of The Raven Cycle, Stiefvater has stated that she can’t be credited with much racial diversity in the series. She seems to be aware of this now, and hopefully, things will improve, but they certainly hadn’t when she wrote these books. Dee’s anxiety (seen more in Lament than this book) is certainly inhibiting, but that’s the closest we come to any representation of disabilities.
Overall, if you want a good series about faeries with overarching plots that keep you in a vicegrip and generally enjoyable characters and writing, I would recommend this series. If you want a flip from a lot of the typical too-easy romantic tropes in YA fantasy, I might suggest Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr instead. Maybe more of a 3.7 than a 4?